


Autumnal Shiver

by mockinrine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Death, Domestic Violence, Eventual Romance, F/M, Jon Snow and Sansa Stark Are Not Related, Mystery, Psychological Trauma, jon's parents are some randoms, sansa had bad luck with past relationships, suspense and plot twists, they also can't touch each other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:41:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27902392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockinrine/pseuds/mockinrine
Summary: Sansa Stark has been seeing monsters and shadows since she was a child. With a unique ability to see people’s inner demons and fears personified, Sansa’s life has been a constant torment. Then, someone tries to kill her. She ends up in a coma and, incredibly, her soul finds itself before Jon Snow, a young man with an ability to match hers: he can see spirits. With his help, Sansa lets go of her fears and tries to find out what happened, in a race against time with the most dreadful possible outcome: her death.
Relationships: Catelyn Stark/Ned Stark, Joffrey Baratheon/Sansa Stark (past), Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Ramsay Bolton/Sansa Stark (past), Robb Stark/Jeyne Westerling
Comments: 9
Kudos: 33





	Autumnal Shiver

**CHAPTER I**

* * *

“Sansa, my dear,” her beloved mother would tell her, when she was no older than the frail age of eight, “you have nothing to fear.”

Catelyn Stark would curl a strand of auburn hair behind little Sansa’s ear, as the girl sniffed and her small shoulders trembled with her sobs.

“B-But the monsters…” she would weep, cradled in her mother’s arms, in the heart of one of her first truly frightening nights.

“The monsters cannot hurt you, sweetheart,” hushed Catelyn, rocking the little girl back and forth on her knees. “Do you want to know why? Because  _ real _ monsters are just other people. Bad people. The scary shadows, they’re not real, my little angel. And what’s not real cannot hurt you.”

Sansa took those words to heart and kept them in an invisible pocket of her mind for the remainder of her life. She had first started seeing grotesque silhouettes at the age of eight, and such a dreadful experience it had been that she had run out of her room screaming, late at night and giving a proper scare to the rest of the Stark household.

But since habits make people, the more often this happened, the more Sansa realized she had no choice but to learn how to live with it.  _ They can’t hurt me, they’re not real, _ she would tell herself, all while this shadowy world would continue to expand beyond the walls of her bedroom, and out into every crevice of her life.

She had started seeing monsters and demons everywhere: in the streets, at school, hovering behind the friends she had only wanted to have fun with, like every normal girl. 

That would change soon, when all the scrawny shadows and grisly apparitions had become too much for Sansa to bear. Desperate to come in his daughter’s aid, Ned Stark had found help in the Reeds, their old time family friends and wise in all things that couldn’t be described as normal.

The Reeds had pointed them in the direction of a certain Melisandre, some sort of witch with vast knowledge of the world Sansa had been forced to grow up in, a world of dreadful apparitions, coldness, and skeletons. 

“Your daughter has a rare ability,” the Red Witch had told Sansa and her parents, that day when she had turned fifteen. “What she sees are dark pieces of human souls. They look like monsters and malevolent spirits because they’re… hmm, the personalizations of our worst sins, you could say.”

Sansa had been unsure of what to make of that, but she hadn’t bothered much with understanding it either. There’d been only one thing on her mind that day: “Can I make it stop?”

She could. So, the Red Witch had made it stop. 

All Sansa could remember about that moment was her lying down, eyes closed, as Melisandre was whispering words of a foreign tongue. She’d felt the Red Witch’s hands hovering by her temples, and once it had all been done, Melisandre had told Sansa that she would still see figures and shapes at the corners of her eyes, but that simply turning to look at them would make them disappear, make them be tucked away in a box that Sansa had both the lock and key to.

Those words were the last things Sansa could remember.

She had no idea how she got there, in the hallway of an apartment that wasn’t hers, with the distinct knowledge that she was Sansa Stark, nineteen years of age, but with a huge memory gap between the present and the day she’d visited Melisandre the Red Witch.

Her chest was twisting in panic, and she looked down at her own hands, almost as if to confirm that she was really there, in her own body. She felt like a stranger, lost and misplaced, and the confusion only deepened her daze.

Desperate to find some clues, she glanced around, her gaze landing on a round mirror mounted above a dresser in that stranger hallway. She saw her own reflection: a girl with auburn, waist length hair, with brilliant blue eyes, dressed in a long, bleumarin skirt, a peach turtleneck, and a knitted cardigan decorated with yellow, red, orange, and brown shapes.

The loud noise of a shatter startled Sansa, and she moved her gaze across the hallway, where she found a young man standing, the shards of a cup and a dark pink puddle of tea at his feet. With one jaw in the sky, and the other into the ground, Sansa stared at the man that was staring right back, a large lump stuck in her throat. 

It was only when she saw him attempt a step toward her, that she dared speak: “I-I didn’t break in, I--” 

He moved closer, carefully, his gaze not once leaving her figure. While shocked at first, his expression was taking on a new skin, one she had trouble deciphering. Perhaps she could even say it resembled  _ concern _ .

Sansa shakily raised her hands as a sign of defense.

“Please, I don’t even know how I got in. I’m not sure I even remember--”

“Sansa?” the man with dark hair and dark eyes spoke. He was staring at her so grimly, so seriously, and so intensely, that her stomach started to feel heavy.

“How… How do you know who I am?” Sansa asked, with a furrow of her brow.

He was still staring, stunned and silenced, making her uncomfortable enough to move a step back. At last, there was a shift in his expression as he let out an incredulous puff of air and slowly shook his head.

“You don’t remember,” he concluded, softly.

“Yes,” Sansa breathed out, curling her arms into herself as defense, “I don’t remember a lot of things. I don’t remember how I got here, I don’t remember  _ you, _ so  _ please _ , just stop gawking at me and say something.”

His mouth opened, but closed immediately. With a frown on his face, he seemed to ponder his next words, but eventually settled on extending a hand toward her. Sansa glanced at the offer with a blend of confusion and warriness.

“Would you take my hand for a moment?” he questioned.

“I …  _ Why _ ?”

“You’ll see why.”

The sooner she’d get this over with, the better. Even though the seed of the fear that he might end up hurting her was planted in the soils of her mind, Sansa reached her hand for his, and gasped when there was no contact that arose. Instead, her fingers simply faded through his, like they were made of water.

“Oh, my God,” her voice trembled as she stole her hand back, staring flabbergasted at her own pale skin, “what did just happen? What’s going on? You know, don’t you?”

His lips pressed together thinly, in a solemn line. 

“I do,” he confirmed. 

Sansa did very little to keep her first intruding thought from projecting itself into the air between them.

“I’m dead.” Two words, and she said them with a composure she didn’t expect herself to be capable of, like she was reaching above the waves while drowning.

The raven haired man blinked and his hesitancy to answer filled Sansa with more somber scenarios, somehow even worse than this one. Among all of them, like a fly trapped in a spider’s web, a small twinkle of hope tried to make itself heard.

“You might be,” he sighed out. “But you also might not be.”

“What does that even  _ mean? _ ” Sansa demanded, feeling at her wit’s end.

“I see spirits,” he explained. “But spirits exist for many reasons. You’re dead, or you’re astral projecting in your sleep, or there was a curse, or-- I don’t know.” He eyed her with a pleading look, like his heart was breaking at the mere sight of her. Sansa made no note of it. Whatever his reason, she couldn’t blame him. People either pitied her, either felt compelled to torment her.

“You should be the only one capable of giving yourself the answers,” he murmured gently. “Don’t you remember what could have happened?”

“I…” Sansa frowned, her blue gaze dangling toward the floor as she racked her mind and dug through the layers of ash and dust that blanketed all the answers that laid beneath them. When her head shook, it ached, and frustration gathered beads of tears in her eyes. “I  _ don’t _ remember, I don’t remember anything that has happened in the past, the past  _ four years _ , the last thing I remember is my 15th birthday, but I’m not  _ fifteen _ , I’m  _ nineteen _ , I know this much.”

“Hey.”

Sansa didn’t realize how labored her breathing was until the young man’s hand was on her shoulder. Her response was a flinch, eyes wide with doubt and confusion.

“Sorry,” he apologized, retreating his hand. “I don’t know if this means anything, but… my name is Jon. Jon Snow. We were schoolmates and had a brief encounter a few years ago?”

The familiarity she’d found in the sight of this dark haired stranger hadn’t been misplaced, after all. With just a little bit more focus, Sansa was able to remember him.  _ Jon Snow _ . He had been her lab partner in school, a hardworking project doer who had happened to show her a crumb of kindness when the ghosts haunting her had chased her into the girls’ bathroom crying.

“I remember you,” Sansa murmured, soothed by the conviction of the  _ first _ palpable memory she could recall that day. “You kept my friends outside the bathroom while I was fixing my makeup.” A pause. “And gave me your jacket after class, when I went home.”

“Because you’d stained yours,” Jon filled in, a tentative smile twitching at his lips.

It didn’t take long for that serenity, a mere guest in the home of her feelings, to take its leave. And confusion reigned once more.

“And you see… spirits?” queried Sansa, under the shadow of her raising brows.

“Yes, but…” Jon fidgeted uncomfortably where he stood, and then dug the tips of his fingers into the pockets of his grey sweatpants, “I’m not entirely sure this is what you want us to talk about. It’s a long story.”

“You’re right. I would like to start with knowing if I’m dead or not. Can you help with that?”

“I believe I do.”

It would have to be a few more dawns before Sansa could escape from this night harbored in her soul, and as much as she dreaded the answer to that question, she knew it was better than obliviousness.

“Do you have a special power that lets you do that?” Sansa asked, trying to calm her nerves. A spirit she may have been, but her dry throat felt humane enough.

Jon’s eyes flickered with an amusement that extended to his lips and then to the light chuckle that tickled his tongue. Sansa watched as he turned heel in the hallway and she followed him into his living room like a lost, stray puppy.

“Very special. It’s called a phone call,” he replied, aiding his words by picking up his phone that had been resting on the coffee table.

“Oh,” was all Sansa could muster, silenced by her own embarrassment. It was enough. She’d said enough. Her frail sanity was already in shambles and she was about to find out how she’d ended up a semi-amnesiac spirit.  _ It was enough _ .

Stunned and dizzy, Sansa watched as Jon browsed through his phone before finally settling on a phone number. After a few seconds which felt like a harrowing eternity, someone picked up, and although it was nothing but an undistinguishable muffle, she immediately recognized her mother’s voice.

“Hello, Mrs. Stark. I don’t know if you remember me, but this is Jon Snow?” He waited for an answer. “Yes, I’ve actually called you, uh, to ask how Sansa’s been? We haven’t spoken in a while and--” He stopped. She must have interrupted him.

Whatever her mother was telling Jon, it wasn’t good. His expression fell and that furrow of his brow unsettled Sansa profoundly. Her innards turned to needles as Jon’s gaze traveled toward her, with that same pity as before, and she forced herself to be prepared for the cruel verdict.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Jon said gravely into the phone. “Do you have any idea what happened?” Her mother was crying. She could point out the quiet sobs from the other end of the line. Only a couple of hiccups later, Jon added, “I understand. It’s not a good time. I’m sorry again and if there is anything I can do, let me know.”

And then he hung up.

Sansa had wanted to prepare, but no amount of preparation could have steadied her voice when she dared poke the bear that should not be poked.

“What happened?” she questioned, her voice quivering of dread.

“You’re not dead,” Jon offered, almost immediately. Sansa would have been relieved if it weren’t for the fact that he continued, “You’re in a coma.”

**Author's Note:**

> hello! if you've enjoyed this first chapter, please do leave feedback of some sort, i'd love to know what you all think and how this idea is received. :)


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